You’ve been waiting for it all year and finally, it’s here: The Language Services Market: 2013 – the only independent study of the industry – is published! As in previous years, we surveyed a vast audience of language service providers (LSPs) from our database of 27,668 companies to arrive at our market sizing and growth rate estimates. What does the report tell us this time?

The language services industry continues to grow, albeit slowly. LSPs: look up and smile. You are part of an industry that is worth US$34.778 billion and continues to grow at 5.13%, despite macroeconomic indicators telling a different story. Yes, it is true that the growth rate has slowed down: In 2012, we estimated market growth at 12.17%, up from 7.14% in 2011. But the demand for language services and technology continues to increase and we expect that to further boost growth rates in the coming years.

The composition of the top rung has changed. Lionbridge Technologies claimed the #1 spot in the rankings of the top LSPs of the world after a gap of eight years. Military supplier Mission Essential Personnel and its other public sector competitors have departed from the ranking, owing hugely to the cut in government spending on language services and budget sequestration.

Expanded regional rankings see new names. This year, we expanded our rankings of the top LSPs in five of the nine regions: Asia (from 20 in 2012 to 30), North America (from 25 in 2012 to 30), Northern Europe (from 20 to 25), Southern Europe (from 15 to 20), and Western Europe (from 25 to 35). The rankings for Western Europe are the largest we’ve ever had in regional tables till date. There were new names in the rankings of the other regions, too: Africa, Eastern Europe,Latin America, and Oceania. All in all, 185 companies appear in this year’s rankings.

We would like to thank all the 1,022 survey respondents who contributed to our understanding of the market. Did you miss your chance to participate or feature in our rankings? No worry, you can always sign up to participate in the 2014 survey.